Chapter I: Preface

There are two great traditions of womanhood. One presents the Madonna brooding over the mystery of motherhood; the other, more confusedly, tells of the acolyte, the priestess, the clairvoyante of the unknown gods. This latter exists complete in herself, a personality as definite and as significant as a symbol. She is behind all the processes of art, though she rarely becomes a conscious artist, except in delicate and impassioned modes of living. Indeed, matters are cruelly complicated for her if the entanglements of destiny drag her forward into the deliberate aesthetic effort. Strange, wistful, bitter and sweet, she troubles and quickens the soul of man, as earthly or as heavenly lover redeeming him from the spiritual sloth which is more to be dreaded than any kind of pain.

The second tradition of womanhood does not perish; but, in these present confusions of change, women of the more emotional and imaginative type are less potent than they have been and will be again. They appear equally inimical and heretical to the opposing camps of hausfrau and of suffragist. Their intellectual forces, liberated and intensified, prey upon the more instinctive part of their natures, vexing them with unanswerable questions. So Fiammetta mistakes herself to some degree, loses her keynote, becomes embittered and perplexed. The equilibrium of soul and body is disturbed; and she fortifies herself in an obstinate idealism that cannot come to terms with the assaults of life. No single sonnet expresses absolute truth from even her own point of view. The verses present the moods, misconceptions, extravagances, revulsions, reveries--all the obscure crises whereby she reaches a state of illumination and reconciliation regarding the enigma of love as it is, making her transition from the purely romantic and ascetic ideal fostered by the exquisitely selective conspiracies of the art of the great love-poets, through a great darkness of disillusion, to a new vision infinitely stronger and sweeter, because unafraid of the whole truth.

Fiammetta is frankly an enthusiast of the things of art; and her meditations unfortunately betray the fact that Etruscan mirrors are as dear to her as the daisies, and that she cannot find it more virtuous to contemplate a few cows in a pasture than a group of Leonardo's people in their rock-bound cloisters. For the long miracle of the human soul and its expression is for her not less sacredly part of the universal process than the wheeling of suns and planets: a Greek vase is to her as intimately concerned with Nature as the growing corn--with that Nature who formed the swan and the peacock for decorative delight, and who puts ivory and ebony cunningly together on the blackthorn every patterned Spring.

The Shaksperean form of sonnet yields most readily the piercing quality of sound that helps to describe a malady of the soul. But the system of completed quatrains in that model suits more assured and dominating passion than the present matter provides. A more agitated hurry of the syllables, a more involved sentence-structure, sometimes a fainter rime-stress, seem necessary to the music of bewilderment.

CONTENTS

THE PROLOGUE OF THE DREAMING WOMEN.
I. THE PRELUDE
II. PERILS.
III. THE PEACE TO BE.
IV. STATUES.
V. THE WEDDING-GARMENT.
VI. THE DEATH OF PROCRIS.
VII. THE WARNING.
VIII. THE ACCUSATION.
IX. THE MEDIAEVAL MIRROR-CASES (1).
X. THE MIRROR-CASES (2).
XI. THE PASSION-FLOWER.
XII. THE VOICE OF LOVE (1).
XIII. THE VOICE OF LOVE (2).
XIV. DREAM-GHOSTS.
XV. MEMORIA SUBMERSA.
XVI. A PORTRAIT BY VENEZIANO.
XVII. THE ENIGMA.
XVIII. THE DOUBT.
XIX. THE SEEKER.
XX. THE HIDDEN REVERIE.
XXI. SOUL AND BODY (1).
XXII. SOUL AND BODY (2).
XXIII. THE JUSTIFICATION.
XXIV. ASPIRATIONS.
XXV. THE ANAESTHETIC.
XXVI. DIVINATION.
XXVII. SUB-CONSCIOUSNESS.
XXVIII. SATIETY.
XXIX. THE CONFESSION (1).
XXX. THE CONFESSION (2).
XXXI. COMRADES.
XXXII. THE SUM OF THINGS.
XXXIII. REACTION.
XXXIV. THE IDEALIST.
XXXV. WOMAN AND VISION.
XXXVI. ART AND WOMEN.
XXXVII. DESTINY.
XXXVIII. CONFLICT.
XXXIX. PREDECESSORS.
XL. TRANSITION.
XLI. THE VIRTUE OF PRIDE.
XLII. SPELL-BOUND.
XLIII. THE NIGHT OBSCURE OF THE SOUL.
XLIV. THE CONQUEST OF IMMORTALITY.
XLV. WOMEN OF TANAGRA.
XLVI. THE INVENTORY.
XLVII. COMFORT (1).
XLVIII. COMFORT (2).
XLIX. THE CHANGE.
L. AT THE END.
LI. THE SOUL OF AGE.
LII. HYPNEROTOMACHIA.
LIII. THE REVOLT.
LIV. AFTER MANY YEARS.
LV. TREASURE.
LVI. THE SOUL TO THE BODY.
LVII. THE IRONIST.
LVIII. IN VAIN.
LIX. RESERVATIONS.
LX. THE NEW LOVE.
LXI. THE WAYS OF LOVE.
THE EPILOGUE OF THE DREAMING WOMEN.

THE PROLOGUE OF THE DREAMING WOMEN

We carry spices to the gods.
For this are we wrought curiously,
All vain-desire and reverie,
To carry spices to the gods.

We carry spices to the gods.
Sacred and soft as lotos-flowers
Are those long languorous hands of ours
That carry spices to the gods.

We know their roses and their rods,
Having in pale spring-orchards seen
Their cruel eyes, and in the green
Strange twilights having met the gods.

Sometimes we tire. Upon the sods
We set the great enamels by,
Wherein the occult odours lie,
And play with children on the sods.

Yet soon we take, O jealous gods,
Those gracious caskets once again,
Storied with oracles of pain,
That keep the spices for the gods.

We carry spices to the gods.
Like sumptuous cold chalcedony
Our weary breasts and hands must be
To carry spices to the gods.

I

THE PRELUDE

Thou sayest, "_O pure Palace of my Pleasures, O Doors of Ivory, let the King come in. With silver lamps before him, and with measures Of low lute-music let him come. Begin, Ye suppliant lilies and ye frail white roses, Imploring sweetnesses of hands and eyes, To let Love through to the most secret closes Of all his flowery Court of Paradise_." . . . Sunder the jealous gates. Thine ivory Castle Is hung with scarlet, is the Convent of Pain. With purple and with spice indeed the Vassal Receives her King whom dark desires constrain. Rejoice, rejoice!--But far from flutes and dances The cloistered Soul lies frozen in her trances.

II

PERILS

Ah! Since from subtle silk of agony Our veils of lamentable flesh are spun, Since Time in spoiling violates, and we In that strait Pass of Pangs may be undone, Since the mere natural flower and withering Of these our bodies terribly distil Strange poisons, since an alien Lust may fling On any autumn day some torch to fill Our pale Pavilion of dreaming lavenders With frenzy, till it is a Tower of Flame Wherein the soul shrieks burning, since the myrrhs And music of our beauty are mixed with shame Inextricable,--some drug of poppies give This bitter ecstasy whereby we live!